The nominations for the 2013 Hugo Awards were recently released, and I’m elated to announce that The Emperor’s Soul has been nominated for Best Novella.

This is, quite frankly, awesome. It’s my first major award nomination in a fiction category. Alongside it, Writing Excuses has been nominated for Best Related Work for its third year running.

I don’t know what to say other than thank you. Thank you to those who supported the story, who gave me feedback, and who encouraged me to find time to whip it into shape and release it last year. Also, a big thanks to Tachyon Publications, the book’s publisher.

The winners will be announced at Worldcon on September 1st. The Hugos are a fan-voted award, but only members of Worldcon can participate. The cool thing is that generally all of the fiction nominees for a given year are offered as free ebooks to anyone who is eligible to vote, and this includes supporting members. (Those are people who don’t attend the convention, but still want to participate in things like the Hugo voting.) The Hugo Voter Packet comes as a single download once everything is collected, and should be available on April 14th so you have plenty of time to read the nominees before votes have to be turned in by July 31st.

This means that for $60 you can get copies of basically everything on that Hugo list (except for the movies and TV episodes). That’s not only an excellent deal, but it gives you the chance to participate in choosing the best works of the year. Every year I’ve done it, it has been a wonderful experience.

A word of warning, however. I strongly suggest that you avoid voting in any categories for which you haven’t read the majority of the nominees. Early in my career, my editor impressed upon me the need to treat this award with solemnity. Don’t vote for me, or anyone else, just because you like us as authors—I encourage you to read the stories and vote for what you feel is genuinely the strongest one in each category. This will preserve the integrity of the award. Don’t treat the Hugos like a popularity contest.

That said, I sincerely hope that many of you try out the experience of reading and voting. The addition of the Hugo Voter Packet with its ebooks has, I understand, led to record participation by the community in the awards. If you’ve ever griped that the books you like never win big awards, this is your chance to become part of the process.

Enjoy, and thank you again to everyone who read and nominated The Emperor’s Soul!

Brandon

UPDATE: The ebook is $2.99 throughout the month of May, 2013. Huzzah!

Note: If you buy or already bought the Tachyon Publications trade paperback and want a free copy of the ebook, email your paperback receipt or a picture of yourself holding the book to ebooks@brandonsanderson.com. We’ll get the ebook to you within a couple of days.

Best Novella nominees

• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)
• The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)
• On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
• San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, Mira Grant (Orbit)
• “The Stars Do Not Lie,” Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012)

Best Related Work nominees

• The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Edited by Edward James & Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge University Press)
• Chicks Dig Comics: A Celebration of Comic Books by the Women Who Love Them, Edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Sigrid Ellis (Mad Norwegian Press)
• Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who, Edited by Deborah Stanish & L.M. Myles (Mad Norwegian Press)
• I Have an Idea for a Book … The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg, Compiled by Martin H. Greenberg, edited by John Helfers (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box)
• Writing Excuses Season Seven, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler and Jordan Sanderson